Play Dirty

CHAPTER 38

GRIFF GAVE A STRANGLED CRY AND LURCHED FORWARD. “You killed him!”

“Not me, Burkett. You.” Rodarte pitched the pistol toward the open grave, where it landed in the dirt. “You ran the man down. By the way, remind me to ask Mrs. Speakman how you learned about this place. Anyway, you ran Ruiz down here, forced him to dig his own grave, then, using the weapon of a policeman you assaulted, you shot Ruiz in cold blood so he couldn’t testify against you at Foster Speakman’s murder trial.”

Griff was still staring at the empty spot where Manuelo had been standing seconds before. He looked at the pistol, much too far away to retrieve. His gaze coming back to Rodarte, he held up his clean hands. “They’ll know I didn’t fire the pistol.”

“Oh, you will. After you’re dead. Don’t worry. I’ll set it up to look convincing.”

“Laura knows the truth.”

Rodarte winked. “I have ways that’ll convince her otherwise.”

Forgetting every rule of self-preservation, Griff lunged.

Rodarte reacted, getting off two shots before Griff grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and wrenched it. Rodarte screamed in pain and dropped the pistol.

Payback time, Griff thought as he slugged Rodarte hard in the mouth. He swung his left fist at the detective’s cheekbone and felt the skin split. But his satisfaction was short-lived because of the pain in his left shoulder, like a branding iron being gouged deep into the flesh. Only then did he realize that he’d been struck by one of Rodarte’s bullets. However, the pain only fueled his rage. He struck mercilessly.

Rodarte fought back with a vengeance. He landed a punch in Griff’s gut, and when Griff staggered back, Rodarte sidestepped and threw another at his kidney. The angle wasn’t good, so the blow didn’t have full impact, but it was enough to cause Griff’s knees to buckle.

He caught himself before he fell and, acting reflexively, kicked backward, connecting solidly with Rodarte’s shinbone. That slowed the detective down long enough for Griff to come around to face him again and catch a fist in his ribs rather than his kidney.

They hammered at each other until Griff lost all sense of time and place, till his hands hurt almost more than the bullet wound, more than any other bleeding part of him. Rodarte’s mouth was a ghoulish maw, from which he continually spat blood. His eyes were crazed with hatred. And Griff knew that Rodarte would fight till one of them was dead.

Not long ago, he would have thought, Fine. I’ll kill the bastard, or he’ll kill me, and either way it won’t matter much. But now he wanted to live. He wanted to live for a long time, and with Laura. That hope kept him fighting even after the fight had gone out of him and every effort was tremendous.

The sweetest sound he’d ever heard was the wail of sirens. They were coming from far away but rapidly approaching. While they were a relief to Griff, they seemed to madden Rodarte and renew his flagging strength and determination.

He bared his blood-covered teeth and charged. Griff feinted left, then right. Rodarte plunged forward headlong, tripped over a deep rut made by a tractor tire, and fell facefirst into a nest of coiled barbed wire.

He shrieked like a banshee, but later Griff wondered if it was from the pain caused by the vicious barbs, or from fury over being defeated.

Griff stood watching as Rodarte struggled to free himself, but his frantic attempts to escape the wire only increased its hold on him. The barbs became embedded in his clothing, his flesh.

The sirens were closer now. Griff shouted down at Rodarte. “Stop fighting it! It’s over!”

“Fuck you!”

Miraculously, the detective managed to roll onto his back, but he was wrapped in wire. Strands of it were stretched taut across his face, the barbs digging deeply into his contorted features. Still his arms and legs thrashed. He managed to get a knee up, although his shoe was trapped in a snare of wire.

“Give it up, Rodarte,” Griff gasped as he wiped his bleeding nose. “For God’s sake.”

The sirens couldn’t have been more than half a mile away. Griff scanned the road for the approaching police cars. Across the flat, fallow fields, he saw the flash of colored lights. One minute, two at the outside and-

“Kiss your ass good-bye, Number Ten.”

Rodarte was aiming a small pistol up at him; only now Griff could see the ankle holster beneath his pants leg. The detective was bleeding from countless puncture wounds, but he seemed unaware of them. The hand holding the pistol was scraped and bleeding. But the finger around the trigger was steady, and so was his aim. The wire across his face made his ugliness even more grotesque. Although it had pinned down one side of his mouth, he still managed a distorted smile.

Griff registered all this in a millisecond. He knew this was his last heartbeat. His final thought was of Laura.

And then Rodarte’s smile went slack. He gave a short cry at the same instant Griff was knocked to the ground. Manuelo Ruiz was a blur moving past him, and so was the edge of the shovel as it arced down from high above the Salvadoran’s head directly into Rodarte’s cranium, cleaving it in two.

After talking almost nonstop for an hour, Griff settled tiredly against the hospital pillow and stared at the acoustical ceiling tiles. His new lawyer, who’d come recommended by Glen Hunnicutt, spoke from across the room. “Gentlemen, my client has answered all your questions. I suggest you leave now and let him get some rest.”

The two Dallas detectives ignored the lawyer and remained where they were. Griff supposed they were waiting to see if he had anything to add. One of them was gray haired, taciturn, and weary looking, a veteran. The other was younger than Griff. More aggressive and edgy than his partner, he’d done most of the talking.

Griff couldn’t remember their names. He wasn’t real sure about the attorney’s. Hunnicutt had made arrangements with him while Griff was still in surgery to repair the bullet wound in his shoulder, which had been nasty and painful but not too damaging, certainly not life threatening.

After a lengthy silence, he asked, “Is Ruiz gonna make it?”

“Seems so,” the younger detective replied. “He’s a tough customer, I’ll say that for him.”

“He is that.” Griff could remember how it had felt having the life squeezed out of him. “He won’t be charged for killing Rodarte, will he?”

The detectives shook their heads in unison. The younger said, “If he hadn’t, Rodarte would have shot you.”

Griff acknowledged that with a small nod.

“That old barn is used as sort of a halfway house for aliens coming in. When he entered the country, Ruiz was directed there, told he could obtain false documents from a guy who’d meet him there. The papers cost him all the money he had, but with them he could get work immediately. Immigration officials are looking for the guys who run that operation.” He paused, then added, “Through the interpreter, Ruiz also admitted to killing Foster Speakman.”

“It was an accident,” Griff said.

“That’s what he claims.”

“It’s the truth.”

“He said you and he were fighting. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Since Griff and McAlister-that was his name, Jim McAlister-hadn’t had time to confer privately before this interrogation, the lawyer cautioned him now with a soft clearing of his throat. Not that Griff would have blurted out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The younger detective continued. “Ruiz was a bit sketchy about the cause of that altercation.”

Manuelo was being loyal to his late boss. He wouldn’t incriminate Speakman by telling the police that he had been ordered by him to kill Griff. Griff saw no point in telling them, either. He kept his poker face.

“You want to shed any light on that, Mr. Burkett?” the younger detective prodded.

“I can’t.”

“Was there some kind of thing between you and Speakman?”

“Before that night, I’d met him only once, and it was a friendly meeting.”

“You had no cross words that night?”

“No.”

“Did you provoke Ruiz?”

“No. Not intentionally anyway. He attacked me from behind.”

“He admitted that,” the older detective grumbled. He was frowning, as though confused. Or highly skeptical. “Still doesn’t explain why he attacked you.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Come on, Burkett,” the younger detective said. “Of course you know. What were you doing there?”

The lawyer cut in. “I’d like a private word with my client before he answers that.”

“No, it’s okay, Mr. McAlister. I can answer.” Griff was betting that the police didn’t know about his relationship with Laura. He was gambling that Rodarte had kept that like an ace tucked inside his sleeve, waiting to play it when it would be most advantageous to him and most detrimental to Griff and Laura. He said, “The meeting that night was a second job interview.”

“Job?”

“To do endorsements for SunSouth.” It was an implausible claim but also impossible for them to disprove.

“What about all that money?”

“Beats me,” Griff lied, speaking before McAlister could stop him. “The box was sitting on the desk in plain sight. Speakman told me to open it and look inside. I did. About that time is when Ruiz attacked me. Maybe he thought I was about to steal the cash from his boss. As I said, I don’t know what set him off. Whatever it was, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life. He worshiped Speakman.”

Clearly the detectives believed there was more to it, but that was all they were going to get from him.

Grudgingly, the younger detective said that Ruiz had told them the same story. “He admitted to killing his boss accidentally during his struggle with you, and said that when he ran from the house, you were trying to save Speakman’s life. All of which clears you.”

Jim McAlister sat back in the vinyl chair, looking complacent.

“Did he also corroborate everything I told you about Rodarte?”

The younger detective nodded. “He didn’t understand what the beef was between you and Rodarte, but everything else he told us matches what you said went down at the old farm.”

“What about Bill Bandy’s murder?” McAlister asked.

“What about it?” asked the older detective.

“For five years suspicion has been cast on my client. He has steadfastly denied any involvement beyond discovering the body.”

The detectives glanced at each other in silent consultation over how much they should tell. Finally the younger detective said, “We’re inclined to believe Mr. Burkett’s allegation against Rodarte. He’s been under investigation by Internal Affairs for a while. Many complaints have been filed against him and some of his pals within the department. Too many to ignore. Serious stuff, like harassment, brutality, corruption. One woman suspect claimed Rodarte fondled her while she was in his custody and then got rough with her when she protested.”

“Sounds like him,” Griff growled. He had hoped to keep Marcia’s encounter with Rodarte out of the fray and was now glad to know she could be left in peace.

The younger detective was saying, “Anyhow, Bandy’s murder case will be reopened and investigated from a different perspective.”

“Am I under arrest?” Griff nodded toward the door of his hospital room, where a uniformed policeman had been posted.

“For the assault on the three police officers in the hotel, as well as for impersonating an officer.”

“There were mitigating circumstances,” McAlister said.

“Save ’em for the judge at his arraignment,” the older officer said. He seemed to hold defense attorneys in no higher esteem than he did the lawbreakers they represented.

“Just be glad you’re not being charged with kidnapping,” the younger detective chimed in. “According to Mrs. Speakman, when you explained to her that Rodarte was impeding justice, she went willingly to help you locate Ruiz.”

Three pairs of eyes were fixed on Griff, waiting to see how he would respond. He said, “Without Mrs. Speakman I would never have found him, and without him I would have been falsely charged with murdering her husband. I’ll never be able to repay her trust in me.” He paused, then asked what was in store for Manuelo Ruiz.

“Soon as we clear things up with him, and he’s well enough to travel, he’ll be sent back to El Salvador. He faces charges there. Killed a guy who’d allegedly raped his sister. We figure, let the authorities down there have him. They’ve got first dibs.”

“I wish him well,” Griff said, almost to himself.

“Generous of you,” the older cop said. “If he hadn’t attacked you, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“He also saved my life.” Taking a deep breath, Griff closed his eyes and asked tiredly, “Is that it?”